Florida, April 19, 1961, at 5:30 in the afternoon of April 19, 1961, some 66 hours after the landing of the invading mercenaries of Brigade 2506, forces of the Rebel Army and the National Revolutionary Militias take Playa Giron.
In Communiqué No.4 the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz states «The Revolution has emerged victorious, although paying a high price in the valuable lives of revolutionary combatants who confronted the invaders and attacked them incessantly without a single minute of truce, thus destroying in less than 72 hours the army organized for many months by the imperialist government of the United States».
The triumph of Playa Giron had two great protagonists; the first of them, the people who from the first call of the Revolution organized themselves in the National Revolutionary Militias, and prepared themselves in the handling of weapons ready to defend their work.
Another great protagonist, Fidel Castro Ruz, not only for his successful leadership of the battle, but also for having foreseen, long in advance, the invasion and for having organized, prepared and armed the people and turned them, militarily and ideologically, into a decisive fighting force together with the Rebel Army for that inevitable day.
More than 150 revolutionary combatants died in the struggle to defend the sacred soil of the Homeland, most of them were killed by the invaders’ air force; on the other hand, and as a manifestation of the humanist policy of the Cuban Revolution, more than 1200 prisoners were handed over and later exchanged for medicine and food for children.
The victory of April 19, 1961 resulted from the sum of thousands of heroic deeds of common people, soldiers, militiamen, workers and peasants, architects of that great epic; common people turned into heroes and martyrs who demonstrated, for the first time, the real possibility of defeating the most powerful imperialism in history.
In the words of Ernesto Che Guevara, «Playa Girón is a symbol for the oppressed peoples»; and as Commander Fidel Castro Ruz affirmed, «Since the Bay of Pigs all the peoples of America have been a little freer».
